Remember WorldWide Telescope, a project started from Microsoft Research back in 2008 that went beyond the skies and mapped the universe using imagery from ground and space-based telescopes around the world? Well it seems like there’s a new way of navigating the universe now, with Microsoft giving a demo of what’s possible with the upcoming Kinect SDK for Windows at MIX11 conference today. Our friend Long Zheng was fortunate enough to capture this on video, and in it you can see the ability to navigate around the universe using hand gestures to control actions such as zooming, rotating, and panning. Check it out in the video below:

From our liveblog yesterday, we noticed that there were quite a few Kinects setup around the keynote hall. We expect that Microsoft will be announcing the research-version of the new Kinect SDK for Windows during tomorrow’s keynote. So stay tuned at LiveSide at 9am PDT for another session of liveblogging at the MIX11 Day 2 Keynote!